Since im sure Un is about one of the very very few people in NK who is allowed to surf the web uncensored he has to know or his intelligence knows that we have been mocking him endlessly since he started this crap..well we have been mocking him and his dad for quite some time now. But we have turned it up to 10 now.Its the American way!Its got to drive them nuts that we are laughing at them when they are trying to intimidate and provoke the US.

awalkingecho:baufan2005: The funny thing is that after Kim Jung Ill died everyone said that his son was the sane one. I really do think he believes all the propaganda that his father showed him his whole life.

He went to school in the West. He knows that propaganda is horseshiat.

Take a small atom bomb and blow it up on the one of his bases and cry US first strike.China then is obligated by treaty to defend them. By the time anyone figures it out it is too late...

Sleep well on that one...

China is well-aware that is in his playbook. I am sure we have already been over diplomatic cables to assure China we will not strike first as well. Moreover, our variable-yield devices in the range that he is capable of producing are clean and will not generate the sort of fallout his will. It would be immediately noticeable before they had to spring to readiness,

Take a small atom bomb and blow it up on the one of his bases and cry US first strike.China then is obligated by treaty to defend them. By the time anyone figures it out it is too late...

Sleep well on that one...

China is well-aware that is in his playbook. I am sure we have already been over diplomatic cables to assure China we will not strike first as well. Moreover, our variable-yield devices in the range that he is capable of producing are clean and will not generate the sort of fallout his will. It would be immediately noticeable before they had to spring to readiness,

All this goes without saying that there would also be nothing on radar. China isn't stupid. Your idea is dumb.

doglover:StopLurkListen: doglover: cameroncrazy1984: SuperNinjaToad: no worries... I think the flash point of WWIII will be the mideast not northeast Asia. Highly unlikely. Despots, tyrants and crazies come and go BUT religions stay forever!

I guess if there is a silver lining in all this is there is no 'religious/tribal' variable in the equation and that is HUGE.

China, NK, SK, Japan etc are pretty much atheistic/agnostic type societies and no one is going to go to war because Buddha, MSM, Allah or Jesus told them to nor are they fighting infidels and die as myrtyrs and be rewarded in the afterlife.

Japan went to war because they believed their Emperor was an infallible man-god.

Actually they went to war because they were trying to build an empire based on the models of the European powers and they carved out a nice little section of China and the South Pacific as theirs. If it weren't for those pesky Germans doing the same thing in Europe, they might have gotten away with it.

In the hypothetical alternative history where Germany wasn't a concern, Japan and the U.S. were almost guaranteed to go to war with each other*, and without an America fighting a two front war and being able to concentrate exclusively on fighting Japan, I would assume that this hypothetical scenario wouldn't end in any better a result for Japan.

*At the time, the U.S. imposed an embargo on oil exports to Japan, and they were in desperate need for oil. Which encouraged them to take the oil-rich areas of southeast Asia by force.

And why did start the oil embargo? Because they disrupted trade with China, who was busy buying up war supplies from us.

If there was no European front, what would that war have looked like? Would ze Germans have helped out? The Italians? Would Stalin join in the fray against Japan or start annexing other lands as well?

Imagine that: Nazis vs Commies at Midway.

Everybody always forgets this, but Mussolini was the grand-daddy of fascism in Europe. He took power while Hitler was still rotting in jail. Plus, he came up with the "spazio vitale" (of which lebensraum is a ripoff) back in 1919, basically laying claim to a "New Roman Empire" in the eastern Med. Most people are aware that Germany knocked off part of Austria, but war wasn't declared until Hitler invaded Poland. Italy, meanwhile, had been conquering various eastern Med islands, as well as the eastern coast of the Adriatic since the 20s. They'd also been adventuring in northern Africa, tightening their hold in Libya and attacking Ethiopia. They were at loggerheads with the French over a lot of this, since France had its own north African colonies and Mediterranean islands. Mussolini was leading up to a European war, but he wanted Germany to hold off until he could split French and English interests further. Hitler jumped the gun, and Mussolini decided to back him after seeing the results of the blitzkrieg.

But take Hitler out of the equation, and you still end up with Italy clashing with France over the Med and north Africa. That'll end up as war someway or another, although possibly not with U.K. involvement.

tlenon:It's sad when people don't watch movies. Then they might understand sarcasm, humor, and the invocation of an arguement posted on FARK prefaced with the term "Supervillian"...

I understand sarcasm and humor. I'm not sure if watching these 'movies' you speak of would help much in that regard; typically sarcasm is denoted with inflection of tone that does not translate well to text. Cheerio.

awalkingecho:tlenon: It's sad when people don't watch movies. Then they might understand sarcasm, humor, and the invocation of an arguement posted on FARK prefaced with the term "Supervillian"...

I understand sarcasm and humor. I'm not sure if watching these 'movies' you speak of would help much in that regard; typically sarcasm is denoted with inflection of tone that does not translate well to text. Cheerio.

ransack.:awalkingecho: tlenon: It's sad when people don't watch movies. Then they might understand sarcasm, humor, and the invocation of an arguement posted on FARK prefaced with the term "Supervillian"...

I understand sarcasm and humor. I'm not sure if watching these 'movies' you speak of would help much in that regard; typically sarcasm is denoted with inflection of tone that does not translate well to text. Cheerio.

awalkingecho:ransack.: awalkingecho: tlenon: It's sad when people don't watch movies. Then they might understand sarcasm, humor, and the invocation of an arguement posted on FARK prefaced with the term "Supervillian"...

I understand sarcasm and humor. I'm not sure if watching these 'movies' you speak of would help much in that regard; typically sarcasm is denoted with inflection of tone that does not translate well to text. Cheerio.

Yeahhhh cause NOBODY could EVER express SARCASM in TEXT..

Well when you put it like thaaaaat....

I'm like SOOOOO intrigued by your profile. That HUUUUGE broken like image gave me SUCH a boner. You ate a WHOLE chicken? I bet it was SOOOO NOT DEAD or COOKED when you ate it. Bet you ate ALLL the bones, too. It's SUPER HARD to eat a LIVE chicken. Which I totally DIDN'T do, a BUNCH of times. I'm seriously SO IMPRESSED.

GAT_00:Infernalist: I used to think that he was doing this strictly to shore up support among the ruling military class. Now...Now I have no clue what that lil bastard is up to.

He can't be serious. We all know he can't hit the U.S. How can this possibly end, except in humiliation for NK?

It's like..He's playing poker and going all-in with a handful of junk cards and we've seen them and he's still insisting that he's got a Royal Straight Full House Flush.

Yeah, this has gone long past just saber rattling for negotiating, unless he thinks that as long as he keeps upping the ante that eventually the UN restrictions will be eased. That isn't going to happen. What's more, he's Western educated in Switzerland, he knows that he's totally outmatched.

None of this makes sense.

He seriously has no other options, there's no food, they are facing a famine worse than the one in the 90's which killed at least 10% of their people.

The past 2 decades they'd rattle the saber and the UN would show up with food to shut them up. Now the UN is sick of their shiat and wants them to rot. What the hell else are they going to do?

My crackpot theory is that he's trying to get "bought out" of NK leadership and go live in Switzerland for the rest of his life. There is no way they can modernize that shiathole by themselves.

my crackpot theory is he wants to "kill off" a large portion of the population and then "declare a cease fire!" and now he can feed his people without outside help.. then he can stay in power for the rest of his long life and tell the rest of the world to leave them alone..

Suppose Kim-Jong-Un wants to leave Best Korea and live in the Western world. He's basically been forced into a life that perhaps he never really wanted. How would he possibly be able to get out of that life? How about force the military to launch a bloodless coup that allows him and his perky wife to leave Korea and live a life of ease in China. All he'd have to do is act so recklessly that the military would decide that he is no longer stable.

I have a very similar crackpot theory, he wants to be "bought out" of NK leadership.

Sure he's a God-Emperor, but of a failing shiat-hole who can barely keep "The People's Palace's" electricity on. He was raised in Switzerland and has seen what the luxuries enjoyed by almost everyone in the west.

Quite frankly the the only thing stopping him is the general's and money, he basically has the whole country working for his comfort. It's how Daddy Kim became the biggest consumer of Hennessy Cognac.

If NK has Swiss bank accounts it's possible he could dissolve the state and take over those accounts for himself and buy off the elite guard so he and his perky wife don't die. Then head over to Switzerland and live off the money forever.

Let China, SK, and the US handle the reconstruction of that craphole.

Granted how would the UN and world react if he asked for a couple million (or to keep the rights to the Kaesong complex or NK mineral rights) for him to leave?

oldfarthenry:This is like recess with the special-needs kid in his wheelchair ramming the sports jock in the ankles.If the jock punches Timmy in the face he's deemed a bully. If he does nothing Timmy will pinch his nuts with his reaching stick.

There's no easy way out of this.

This is very nearly true, except that the kid in the chair is also threatening to throw rocks at the scrawny/nerdy kid across the lunch table who's friends with the Jock's little sister. If/when rocks are thrown, the game changes.

Lusiphur:Giltric: If I was China I would use NK to start an engagement with the US and then decimate the US in an all or nothing war.

That's silly, because that war would end with the world an unusable, burnt cinder, and all civilization reduced to grunting and painting on cave walls with chalk. Also, China has no interest in attacking the US. We are far too important to them, economically. Remember, they need us a WHOLE lot more than we need them.

What China SHOULD do is invade North Korea. This might sound crazy, but is actually a perfect solution to all of the major problems China is facing right now:

1) Overpopulation of young adult males. If instead of using their higher-tech arsenal, they instead start a draft, targeting undesirables - males 18-30 with no education, a poor or non-existent job, and a potential for getting restless at home - and then send the drafted men on foot into NK with barely enough equipment to have fought the first Korean War and no training, they could get rid of a ton of their unwanted young males. Which leads to...

2) Korean Humanitarian Crisis. If they send those poorly armed, angry, violent young men with no futures into North Korea, they could effectively get them to slaughter a large percentage of the native population. Especially since most of the native population is technically in the reserve, anyway. China is good enough at locking down on critics, foreign and domestic, and powerfule enough, that they could get away with this without suffering any serious backlash from the international community. After all, who's going to impose sanctions on China today? And since they have a permanent veto at the UN, they are essentially above any kind of real reproach or punishment. Wiping out most of the NK citizens eliminates the threat of "the worlds biggest humanitarian crisis", as so many people like to call it. This, in turn, opens the door to...

awalkingecho:Additionally I thought it interesting that the on February 12th, NK conducted its nuke test, and the following day just before the State of the Union address, Russia's bombers were found circling Guam. I wonder if there's some people waiting for an opportunistic distraction.

Not to mention other recent incidents near Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico from Pootie-poot.

What people don't realize is that Russia is friendly with NK, they buy minerals and labor camps from them. VICE has a documentary about it.

awalkingecho:Gawdzila: The thing is, Un has kind of blustered himself into a corner. If it really is the case that he doesn't have solid support from within, one wonders might happen if he runs out of threats to make and it comes to put-up-or-shut-up time. Or, more remotely, if his failure to follow through on his threatening leads to some sort of internal coup or power struggle.

I expect the rhetoric to eventually calm down and things to return to normal after Un declares victory within his own country, but there is some remote chance that this might get... weird.

This is the whole point. He's out of options. And his military hardlining and mobilization has cost him the preparation for the next harvest. There will be no food, and there will be no aid. He dies if he 'declares victory' anyway. He might as well take some people out with him.

Maybe we should help plan Operation Wicker Man and see if we can improve the harvest.